As the world of books begins to increasingly go digital, American authors and publishers have finally reached an agreement with Google to settle lawsuits over Google's Book Search program. This controversial program is able to scan millions of books and make their contents available on the Internet. The result: Google can sell electronic versions of copyrighted works that have gone out of print.
Although this deal still awaits court approval and the bookshop would only operate in the United States to begin with, this agreement is considered by many to be one of many initiatives under which books are making what may be the biggest technological leap since Gutenberg invented moveable type.
While the ability to browse and purchase books from online stores like Amazon has previously led to an increase in book sales, in the first nine months of this year, book sales in the United States have fallen 1.5 percent, according to the Association of American Publishers. However, sales of e-books, read on devices like Amazon's Kindle, on personal computers or on mobile phones. Wholesale sales of e-books were up 55 percent from a year ago.
In fact, 40 percent of book publishing professionals think digital sales would surpass sales of paper-and-ink books by 2018, according to a survey published in conjunction with the Frankfurt Book Fair last month.
In the proposed settlement, Google would share online sales revenue with publishers and authors. But publishers are still looking for other new ways to sell books in digital form like subscription plans, where readers would pay a monthly fee for online access to best sellers or making online versions of books free or reduced in price by supporting the version with advertising, similar to the approach adopted by newspapers on the Internet.
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